Smith & Wesson recently reintroduced two revolvers from the old company’s storied past. Both of them are guns that make a lot of sense, but they were discontinued because of low sales. The guns are the Models 21 and 22 with fixed sight, 4-inch N-frames in .44 Special and .45ACP, respectively.

Both models have antecedents in the pre-World War II era and both were brought back into production just after the war ended. They’re only two of the many models developed and produced under the leadership of Carl Hellstrom, a native of Sweden and dynamic president of S&W from 1946 to 1963. So the gun we will examine here is the S&W Model 26 revolver.